My name is Jon Gillham I am a 33 year old, husband, father of 3 (all aged 4 and under), engineer and huge geek when it to comes to systematizing and outsourcing any business. With over 10 years in the online publisher/advertising space I try to provide my thoughts with the hope it helps people build their own business! More About Me

My Online Income History and New Business Strategy

This post has been updated in 2016 to bring everyone up to speed on my business and what I will be doing in 2016 to grow my business.

I started working online to make money in 2007 while in College and have slowly built up online business to the point it is at now.

Like many of you I have been grinding away online building up a business and did not experience over night success.

There are no tricks and many people will see my income numbers now and forget the long long road I have taken to get here so I like to keep this post updated with my entire history of how I have made money online.

No matter where you are on your journey I am here to help along the way. I work to share everything except my passwords with the goal of providing useful information and examples of what you can be doing to build your own business.

3 Things to Know About This Site!

I don’t promote information products

I have never used an information product

My goal is to create USEFUL & ACTIONABLE posts!

Here Is My Online History Starting Online in 2007…

Pre University – Side Hustles

Lawn Cutting

Selling Skis on Ebay

2004 Went to University

2005 – Bought International Edition Textbooks from India at 90% Off and Sold for 75% off to friends

2009 – Started Working in Project Management for an Oil and Gas Company

2009 – Started replicating the “feeder” sites and made them into money sites – $750/month

Outsourced everything article marketing, web creation etc.

The dream of a self growing fully outsourced system was strong!

2010 – Attempted to build a Facebook Team Gift app after coming up with the idea at my Bachelor party with friends– FAILED – $1,000 gone

2010 – Got Married

2010 – Built a team on ODesk to promote each website using Yahoo Answers and Blog Commenting – $1,250/month

Built the team up to 15ppl

2011 – Stopped Being Profitable & Cut Back On Team To Become Profitable – $500/month

2011 – Started Building Private Blog Network and Testing Other Strategies to Improve Ranking and Drive Traffic

Feb 2011 – Panda hit – No Impact on My Business

2011-2012 – Started focusing on lower quality exact match domains that required less work and my team was building 2/week – $1,500/month income

Never used “automated” link building methods!

Never used spun content on my sites (but yes I was one of them that used it on article sites)

Apr 2012 – Penguin hit – Small Impact

Doing some research and trying to think about SEO like Wayne Gretzky played hockey “go where the puck is going to be not where it is” translated into “give the search engines what they want not game the current loopholes”

My Online Income Goal:

Make over $15k/month (RELIABLY) move my family to our hometown by the age of 35 – 4 years to go. Get more time with family, friends and experience the activities I enjoy. Solve real problems with my business.

How Am I Going to Get There?

It is time for me to either confirm I am on the right path and scale or pivot and test a new model.

Here are the requirements for whatever business model I choose:

Limited Time – Due to time with my wife/son/daughter, a busy and unpredictable day job and other activities I don’t want to live without(sports and camping)

Ability to Walk Away for Extended Periods – Like I mentioned above I need to be able to not work on the business for a 1-2 week stretch. Outsourcing and systematizing is key

Add Value(solve real problems) – I did the no value exact match niche sites and I am not willing to go down that route again. Whatever I do must add value to the internet – I believe it is the only way to build a sustainable business.

Enjoy The Work I Do – I need to do work that I enjoy – luckily for me I really enjoy systematizing work and managing teams executing my strategies. Developing a strategy, setting up systems to have other people execute and then managing that process is definitely central to my business.

Reliable Income w Growth Potential – If I do the things I mention above I believe the income streams will be reliable but it is important to make sure that the income is diversified and reliable. Exploiting a temporary loop hole in Google is not adequate.

2016 Goals and Plan:

I am a 33 year old husband, father of 3, engineer and a huge fan of developing systems to build useful and profitable websites. The reason I build online businesses is to provide financial independence for my family and yours AND so I can spend time outside skiing and biking with my family.